The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-04-28
TN A BIG HOTEL.
IMPORTANCE OF THE LINEN ROOM
WOMAN'S DEPARTMENT.

WOMAN'S DEFAF1 MEN L.
Duties of the Housekeeper's Assistant.
Destruction of Bed LInsn-Fate Of the
Hotel Napkin-A Place for Executive
Ability.
One of the pleasantest and best of the
minor places among the employees of big
hotel is the linen room woman's. She
is q subordinate of the housekeeper, but
her pay-which ranges from SIC to $50 O.
months reasonably good; her duties are
clearly defined and not onerous, her re-
sponsibility is small, and her work is done
under rather pleasant conditions.
All the soiled sheets, towels, pillow
cases, bed spreads and other articles that
must go to the laundry are first carried TO
the housekeeper, who takes accurate count
of them. When they come back clean
they are counted again, and such of them
as need repairing pass into the hands of
the assistant housekeeper or linen room
woman, who with thread and needle or
sewing machine fixes them up as neatly as
neatly as possible There is a great deal
of this work in hotel that has been run
ming tor any length of time, especially if it
is a house doing mainly transient bust
ness.
DESTRUCTION OF LINEN.
Washing destroys the linen much more
than wearing does, and the destruction of
linen in a house where the guests belong
almost entirely to the permanent class, or
boarderS, and the beds are not changed
oftener than twice a week, is very much
less than where the changes are made as
often as the rooms are vacated, which in
transient business may occur every day.
On an average the destruction of bed linen
IN oh
The loss on napkins amounts to about 30
or 40 per cent, as many of them are stolen
or mySteriOusly disappear. The wear and
tear on blanketS-which are supposed to be
washed only once a years. small, and
they last a long time. Shaking, airing
and summing them presumably keeps them
clean and wears them little. Then they
are only in use a few months, while the
sheets, pillow cases and spreads are in SER
vice all the time. Primarily, in the selec-
ton of blankets hotel men are exceedingly
careful to practice the true economy of
getting articles that will wear, even if
their first cost is rather heavy. The blan-
kets as well as the linen are in charge of
the linen room woman.
The dealing out of clean linen, etc., to
the chambermaids for the rooms is NOM
inally done by the housekeeper, but in
practice it is the linen room woman who
takes the articles from their places on the
long shelves where they are piled after
coming from the laundry, and keeps count
of what are given out.
FATE OF THE NAPKIN
Napkins pass through other hands. The
head walters in the dining room, restau-
rant and lunch rOom-where the latter
exists-are required to keep count of them
when they go to the laundry, and again to
take stock of them when they are re-
turned. In good hotels napkins are seldom
mended, but when they have holes worn
in them by washing, or become frayed and
torn, they are discarded from public SER
vice and pass to other uses. Hence they
rarely get into the linen room woman's
hands.
The qualities that are required to make
a woman useful in the linen room-order,
cleanliness, neatness, honesty and strict
attention to buSineSS-are such as are
likely to make her occupancy of the place
a permanency dependent upon her own
choice, and changes in this department are
rarer than in any other. The hOuSekeeper
gets from $40 to 500 month, but her re-
sponsibility is much greater than that of
the linen room woman. Greater executive
ability is demanded of her, and the proba-
bilities of her more active and ambitious
mind leading her to seek changes to better
herself are much greater than in the case
of the linen room woman, who is generally
a staid, middle-aged widow of easy, con-
tented disposition. 1t is very seldom that
the latter rises to the place of the former,
even when a vacancy occurs. One of the
leading uptown hotels has q linen room
woman who has placidly held her place
and seen hOuSekeeperS come and go, and
even prOprietOrship change, during twenty
years.-New York Sun.